Episode Details

Manas — The Earliest Recordings — Part 9 of 31 (The Memorial Feast of Kokotoy — Part Two)

The making of the feast continues: Bok Murun comes in state to old Koschoi and asks how the feast shall be made ready, how the horses shall run, and how the believers and the unbelievers shall be kept in peace. Urbu counsels a race of fifteen days; Manas answers that a race among all the gathered peoples would stir up quarrel and spoil the feast, and counsels the long course instead — out in the cold grey autumn, and home in the fly-rich, colourful spring. Then the watchers name the great racehorses one by one, Joloi's Ach Budan among them, and the horses are driven out along Issyk-Kul to be fed and marked with a golden seal for the race. At the last, Kongyr Bai, the prince of China, seizes Bok Murun and demands his horse, the Manykar — and Bok Murun rides to Manas for counsel, and Manas's answer is: give him nothing, for today it is the Manykar, and tomorrow it will be everything. From the earliest written Manas, recorded from Kyrgyz singers in 1862–1869 and published by Wilhelm Radlov in 1885 (Proben der Volkslitteratur, Part V), in a fresh English translation made for KacheliTV. This is the Manas of the first singers ever written down, not the later giant tellings.

Chapters:

00:00 Bok Murun Comes to Koschoi

02:40 Urbu's Counsel

05:18 The Watchers Name the Horses

11:10 The Demand for the Manykar

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